Police Admit Operating Insecure Cameras Anyone Could View Online

The Delaware State Police (DSP) have admitted to operating a pair of insecure surveillance cameras that anyone could control online after the cameras were exposed by The Dan Gaffney Show, CopBlaster.com, and an anonymous source. The cameras have since been password protected or removed.

Earlier this week, CopBlaster.com was contacted by an anonymous source claiming that he had the URL and physical location of an insecure police surveillance camera in Milford, Delaware. The URL was a public location on the internet where anyone could view what the camera was recording. They could also take control of the camera at the click of a button and target or zoom in on anything within view including people's homes that just happened to be near the camera's primary target. The primary target could be pinpointed by selecting a preset option labeled "front door" that would focus the camera on the front door of the Milford Liberty gas station.

Cop Blaster posted this information and began contacting news outlets in Delaware on May 18th. The next day Delaware 105.9's Dan Gaffney payed the gas station a visit that he later described on the air as an eerie experience watching himself walk around the station on his phone. He later sent a photographer that managed to locate the camera inside a fake transformer on top of a telephone pole across the street from the Milford Liberty. The camera was behind a type of two way mesh that allowed the camera to see out by zooming through any hole while the mesh kept anyone outside from being able to see in. Dan Gaffney posted the photos on Facebook and got quite a reaction even though he did not say where the camera was for fear of being accused of obstructing an ongoing police investigation.

On 5/19, Cop Blaster's anonymous source identified but could not pinpoint a second camera in the Milford/Harrington area. The camera is the same make and model with the same online user interface that allowed visitors to take full control, but unlike the first camera this one has no presets and is not on a telephone pole. The second one appears to be in some kind of box closer to the ground perhaps the height of a trash can or mail box. By the end of the day both cameras had password protection.

On 5/20, Dan Gaffney posted an update showing that the Milford Liberty camera had been removed and promising to post a much longer update in the future. That same day an identical camera in Michigan exposed by Cop Blaster received password protection. The URL for the Milford Liberty camera now times out while the other two display login prompts, so one can conclude that the other two are still operational.

Aftermath

On 5/22, Dan Gaffney did a follow up on the air in which he released feedback he received from the Milford Police Department (MPD), DSP, and two local utility companies. Cop Blaster was listening and was the first to post quotes from that broadcast. He also solicited listener feedback like he had been all week.

	Milford Police Department One of the first people he spoke to was Milford Police Chief Kenneth Brown who when asked about the Milford Liberty camera said, "i am aware of it but it belongs to another agency...Delaware State Police is who you need to talk to." This finger pointing could be an indication that whatever was going on was important enough to keep the chief in the loop on and big enough to warrant the involvement of a larger agency like DSP.
	Delaware State Police Gaffney moved on to the DSP and received a statement from DSP spokeswoman Melissa Jaffe admitting that DSP is "are aware of the aforementioned camera, [and] aware of vulnerabilities associated with these types of cameras" and went on to say that her department does not have or need a warrant to operate them because they are there to observe what is in plain view. She also claimed that the cameras were placed in response to complaints from citizens, but Gaffney was quick to point out that complaints from citizens are usually handled by the MPD and not the DSP.
	Delmarva Power A spokesman named Timothy from Delmarva Power said "Delmarva Power does not permit the installation of hidden cameras on our utility poles." Timothy must not have been aware that the DSP had already admitted having hidden cameras installed on the same poles that he claimed Delmarva Power does not allow them to be installed on. It is not known if Delmarva Power was contractually obligated to deny their existence or not.
	Delaware Electric Cooperative Delaware Electric Cooperative said "Delaware Electric CO-OP...on rare occasions the coop partners with local police requests to protect public safety." This admission is a clear indication that there are many other cameras like theses in Delaware alone.

Listener Feedback

Gaffney's listeners have voiced strong opinions on this matter. Most viewers were supportive of Gaffney's efforts while a small minority criticized him for disrupting the police. Here are some notable comments for the show's Facebook page:

"This is so good! It's like the old time serial radio shows. 'Tune in tomorrow for the further adventures of Dan Gaffney, Super Sleuth!'" - Sue Hudson

"This is an undercover job that Dan Gaffney has no business being in. Let's hope the drug dealers don't shoot at the city lineman while changing pole etc." - Yvonne White

"Once people know this they will now associate utility workers installing normal equipment with law enforcement and surveillance" - Mike Layton

"Well even if it is being used in some type of official capacity that fact that others were able to access it is negligent at best and should be criminal and it makes it fairly pointless. Sound like a sloppy security company or amateur sleuth who may also have some creepy Hobbies." - Rose Bowler

"What I find more creepy than Big Brother spying into peoples bedrooms are the attitudes of the people in this string angry that Dan Gaffney exposed it ." - Greg Callaway

"I played with it this morning." - CleanQueen Delaware

Privacy Recommendations

If any community including Milford wants to protect their privacy the best thing they can do is keep their eyes open. If they spot a utility crew working on a telephone pole they might want to have a closer look at it when they are done. Check for anything that looks like the two way mesh photo'd earlier. That pattern is not normal on a transformer. Unfortunately, once the police are busted doing things like this they often change tactics. As the image below shows, the DSP in this area was already hiding cameras disguised as things other than transformers on things other than telephone poles.

Keeping your curtains closed is certainly a must for any resident that does not want anyone peeking in. That and being careful not to do the wrong thing outside are the only things most people can do to thwart this. On rare occasions people may spot the insecure camera online and point it out, but that does not happen most of the time.

Is This Legal?

Some use of these cameras is certainly legal while other use may be illegal.

What is Certainly Legal

This type of surveillance is certainly legal with or without a warrant when it comes recording outdoor activities. Placing cameras on public property to view anything visible from that property without peeking into buildings is perfectly legal. The legal community refers to this as Plain View Doctrine as explained by the National Criminal Justice Reference Service (NCJRS), "If an officer is lawfully in a location, then items 'in plain view' that can be recognized as contraband or the fruits, instrumentalities, or evidence of criminal activity may be lawfully seized as evidence (Warden v. Hayden)." Therefore it is perfectly legal to place a camera on a utility pole and film people going in and out of a gas station.

What Might Not Be Legal

The second Milford surveillance operation may not be legal if it is being used to observe people inside their homes without their permission or a warrant. Officer Jaffe has already stated publicly that there are no warrants and that these cameras are for plain view observation. That would legally permit DSP to spy on anyone in their yard, but what about cameras clearly pointed at homes where the most obvious activity, especially at night, is what goes on inside the homes?

According to NCJRS: "The Supreme Court's decision in Horton v. California summarized the plain-view doctrine as having two essential components. First, the item must be accessible to an officer's sight, touch, smell, or hearing in the course of other legal actions by the officer. Second, not only must the officer be lawfully in the place where the object is in plain view, but he/she must also have a lawful right of access to the object. The latter requirement means, for example, that although an item deemed by an officer to be evidence of a crime is in plain view through a window, the officer cannot have access to that item except by obtaining a warrant to enter the building in which the item was observed. Further, in Arizona v. Hicks, the Supreme Court held that the crime-related nature of the item must be immediately recognizable without further search or testing."

Provided the above is accurate, then the police need a warrant to confiscate contraband that can be seen in a home through a window because in a home there is a heightened expectation of privacy. The police can take anything from a yard that is in plain view provided they have probably cause that it is evidence of criminal activity, but if that same evidence is in a house and viewed through a windows they can't just barge in and take it the way they can outdoor items.

The next question is whether or not that expectation of privacy extends to looking into a home from outside. Obviously the DSP would need a warrant to put the camera inside the house, but do they need a warrant to monitor the same place from outside through a window?

According to the United States District Court for the District Massachusetts they do. Just last year the court granted a motion to suppress evidence obtained from a months long video surveillance operation just like the second Milford/Harrington area camera appears to be.

"Casual observations of a person's forays in and out of her home do not usually fall within the Fourth Amendment's protections. Here, the defendants ask the Court to consider whether a precise video log of the whole of their travels in and out of their home over the course of eight months, created by a camera affixed to a utility pole that could also read the license plates of their guests, raises Fourth Amendment concerns. After a thorough analysis of the parties' arguments and recent Supreme Court authority, the Court rules that it does. " see United States v. Moore-Bush.

The government has since appealed the Moore-Bush case, oral arguments were heard by the First Circuit Court of Appeals in January. This author could not find a copy of their ruling online, but according to this Legal Issues Student Guide by the Municipal Police Training Committee the First Circuit upheld the District Court's decision.

The First Circuit's decision did not have an immediate impact on the state of the law in Delaware because the Third Circuit hears appeals from the District of Delaware. Moore-Bush would have to become a Supreme Court case or someone would need to challenge this surveillance in Delaware and hope that the District of Delaware adopts the position of the District of Massachusetts. This issue appears ripe for a challenge in the District of Delaware.

Moore-Bush still did not involve filming people in their home through an open window. Surely such a search is less reasonable than the search in Moore-Bush.

Conclusion

Delaware's big brother has been temporarily blinded in one eye. People that live in the Milford Liberty area can breathe a sigh of relief that they are not being watched so closely for now, but this could lead to a false sense of security because it is not known how many other cameras are in that area or how long it will take DSP to find another way to spy on the Milford Liberty. It is ultimately up to the community to be vigilant if they want to protect their privacy.